in need of IET Fellow to Support my IET Fellow membership application

Hi,

I appreciate the difficulty here, the wording is:

"Your two supporters must be people of recognised repute who know you professionally and can vouch for the evidence you provide. One should be an IET Fellow or a Fellow of any Professional Engineering Institution"

The challenge is "can vouch for the evidence you provide", which is why it needs to be someone who knows you well enough to know that you did what you said you did.

If you absolutely do not have a professional relationship with any fellow of any any UK institution then I suggest you contact fellowship@theiet.org  They are experienced in engaging with people who are in this situation and working to find a way through it.

The one suggestion I would make is that an effective way of gaining potential supporters is to engage in IET activities - or the activities of any of the other UK PEIs. It won't be an instant answer, for the reasons above fellows you meet won't be able to endorse you until they have known you for a while, however it is the way that many of us met our future supporters. 

Thanks,

Andy

Hi,

I appreciate the difficulty here, the wording is:

"Your two supporters must be people of recognised repute who know you professionally and can vouch for the evidence you provide. One should be an IET Fellow or a Fellow of any Professional Engineering Institution"

The challenge is "can vouch for the evidence you provide", which is why it needs to be someone who knows you well enough to know that you did what you said you did.

If you absolutely do not have a professional relationship with any fellow of any any UK institution then I suggest you contact fellowship@theiet.org  They are experienced in engaging with people who are in this situation and working to find a way through it.

The one suggestion I would make is that an effective way of gaining potential supporters is to engage in IET activities - or the activities of any of the other UK PEIs. It won't be an instant answer, for the reasons above fellows you meet won't be able to endorse you until they have known you for a while, however it is the way that many of us met our future supporters. 

Thanks,

Andy

Dear Andy,

Thank you so much for your response. As you mentioned, I did reach out to the Fellowship team and even spoke with them directly to explain my situation, given that I don’t have any IET Fellows within my close professional circle who have worked with me.

The IET Fellow who endorsed my application is from the same line of work, and therefore had a strong understanding of the projects I have delivered. On that basis, they kindly agreed to support my case. I explained this in detail to the application team, but unfortunately they have declined, stating that because the Fellow has not worked with me directly, they cannot accept their endorsement. They also confirmed that they are unable to support me in finding another IET Fellow for my applications .. So as of now its a dead end for me ..

Quite interestingly i happened to engage with few IETF and they have received their fellowship without any IETF endorsement ,, They mentioned that their managers in the senior level has endorsed their application and they were accepted and even granted the fellowship .. 

Hi,

Yes, I'm not surprised at that, the most important issues are that the supporter has a level of reputation in the industry and that they know you well. Of course in these cases there will be a judgement made if they are not Fellows as to whether thewy hold a similar level of repute in the industry.

Thanks,

Andy

Hi Mark,

I’ve been speaking with individuals who recently received their Fellowship, and many mentioned that their supporters were typically Directors or above... and they donot hold any fellowship from IEEE or IET ..infact none ..

In my case, my direct manager, who is a Senior Director, is already supporting me. I can also request endorsements from other leaders across my current and past roles who know my work well and can provide credible references...

What I’m trying to better understand is how IET defines or evaluates this supporter repute?

I would really appreciate your guidance and any suggestions on how best to navigate this requirement to strengthen my application.

Hi Andy,

Your advice to contact fellowship@theiet.org is reasonable, and it is exactly what is written on the IET website, but it doesn't work anymore. I got a reply from their team:

1) They can't assist in this situation.

2) They can't help finding referrals.

3) They don't accept referrals other than IET. For example, they don't accept fellow referrals from BCS.

4) They require your referral to work at the same company as you for at least 5 years.

It seems impossible to meet the requirements to have a co-worker who is also an IET fellow and worked with you for such a long period :'(

Something is wrong with the above bullet points as fellows, other than FIET are acceptable that professionally know you. 

• Find two supporters: your supporters must be people of recognised repute who know you professionally and can vouch for the evidence you provide. This means one of them should be an IET Fellow or a Fellow of any Professional Engineering Institution, as defined by the Engineering Council.  If you are unable to find such a supporter, please describe how your supporters are of recognised repute. If you would like assistance finding an IET Fellow, you can email fellowship@theiet.org.

The above statement also says that if you draw a blank on finding a fellow supporter, wither FIET or a fellow of another PEI, then you can adopt a Plan B approach etc.  

And similarly bullet point 4 is incorrect, as Gerard says the criteria is "know you professionally", they don't have to have worked at the same company. Many Fellows are self employed consultants, or CEOs of small companies where they will be the only Fellow.

But it is reasonable that supporters need to have known you during the period of time for which you are claiming evidence.

As a general point to all readers of this thread: I don't know about other IET Fellows, but I've been receiving a lot of requests over the past 1-2 years from potential fellows asking if can support their application. Before approaching people I'd suggest considering this: in general only approach those where you already have their contact details in your address book. If you haven't, then it's unlikely they will know you well enough to be able to support your application.

Look at it this way: if someone who I don't know approaches me to support their application, then all I know about them is what they tell me. Which the Fellow assessors can read from themselves from the application. So my signature would not be adding any value at all to that application.

Now, I'm sure there are people in my industry who I may not speak to daily, but I've known them for long enough and worked with them at a level where I would be happy to support them. And this is where the "If you would like assistance finding an IET Fellow, you can email..." point can come in useful, sometimes you'll find someone you know slightly indirectly who you didn't know was a Fellow, and who may be able to help. But please take it graciously if they say they don't feel they know you well enough to support.

But please don't try approaching random Fellows on here or elsewhere asking them to support you, it's frustrating for you and embarrassing for them. Use your own network.

Getting IET Fellowship is tough, but of course it would be meaningless if it wasn't. Ultimately it is a mark that you have made a significant impact in your industry, and the argument is that if you have, then suitable supporters will know you have.

That all said, I do appreciate that this is harder for non-UK applicants, hopefully others can help further clarify the point Gerard makes about the range of supporters that can be used. My understanding is certainly the same as Gerard's (and Gerard understands the process much better than I do anyway!) 

I would also be interested to know why those who don't have PEI Fellows - particularly FIETs - in their network are interested in applying? It may seem an odd question, but personally the value for me was that because my professional network included a number of PEI Fellows, it meant there was a potential career advantage in becoming one myself as it was a well understood status. If I'd stayed in my first career in a different engineering industry where it was less of a "thing" I can imagine I wouldn't have applied - in fact I doubt I would have ever joined a PEI at all. I'm not writing this to try to put people off - I'm all for expanding understanding the PEIs into areas where they currently are not well appreciated - it's just curiosity, particularly as personally I seem to be seeing a lot of interest in fellowship from "non-traditional" PEI areas, i.e. beyond the "utilities - defence - transportation - infrastructure" fields they tend to be known for.

>> I would also be interested to know why those who don't have PEI Fellows - particularly FIETs - in their network are interested in applying?

Hey Andy, here is my motivation:

Let's say I worked at Meta in the UK for 5 years. It's a reputable, well-known, hard-to-get industry-leading company with an impact on billions of users worldwide. But I don't see any IET fellows around in the company. It looks like a dead end for the whole industry-leading company getting into IET, unless someone(me in this case) gets into the IET circle.

P.S. A further thought over lunch, it's probably worth remembering the history of this. Originally Fellowship of all the PEIs was intended to recognise Members who'd shown outstanding service to the industry or the institution. So, except in very exceptional cases, Fellows were elected from the membership, so there was that connection between existing Fellows and those about to be appointed. That intention has now (as I understand it) changed, so that it is easier for the IET to use Fellowship to recognise those who've offered outstanding service to the industry but are not already Members. But a 154 year old institution changes very slowly, so practically we are in a situation where the processes may not have quite caught up with the ambition.

So it is really worth flagging up where the process hasn't worked, so that improvements can keep being considered. 

Artem, they are there as I personally have been involved in assessing FIET applicants from Meta. Some amazing stories too.